-hissing"
propensities.

We are not a Marco Polo or a William de Rubruquis, and we have no
wonders to tell of the Great Mogul or the Great Cham. We did not sail
for Messrs. Pride, Pomp, Circumstance, and Company; consequently, we
have no great exploits to recount. We have been wrecked at sea only once
in our many voyages, and, so far as we know our own tastes, do not care
to solicit aid again to be thrown into the same awkward situation. But
for a time we have been

"Placed far amid the melancholy main,"

and now we are among our own tea-cups. This is happiness enough for a
cold winter's night. Mid-ocean, and mid tea-cups! Stupendous change,
let us tell you, worthy friend, who never yet set sail where sharks and
other strange sea-cattle bob their noses above the brine,--who never
lived forty days in the bowels of a ship, unable to hold your head up to
the captain's bluff "good morning" or the steward's cheery "good night."
Sir Philip Sidney discourses of a riding-master he encountered in
Vienna, who spoke so eloquently of the noble animal he had to deal with,
that he almost persuaded Sir Philip to wish himself a horse. We have
known ancient mariners expatiate so lovingly on the frantic enjoyments
of the deep sea, that very youthful listeners have for the time resolved
to know no other existence. If the author of the "Arcadia" had been
permitted to become a prancing steed, he might, after the first
exhilarating canter, have lamented his equine state. How many a first
voyage, begun in hilarious impatience, has caused a bitter repentance!
The sea is an overrated element, and we have nothing to say in its
favor. Because we are out of its uneasy lap to-night, we almost resemble
in felicity Richter's _Walt_, who felt himself so happy, that he was
transported to the third heaven, and held the other two in his hand,
that he might give them away. To-morrow morning we shall not hear that
swashing, scaring sound directly overhead on the wet deck, which has so
often murdered our slumbers. Delectable the sensation that we don't care
a rope's-end "how many knots" we are going, and that our ears are so far
away from that eternal "Ay, ay, Sir!" "The whales," says old Chapman,
speaking of Neptune, "exulted under him, and knew their mighty king."
Let them exult, say we, and be blowed, and all due honor to their salt
sovereign! but of their personal acquaintance we are not ambitious. We
have met them now and then in the sixty thousan